Larry McMurtry's Opening Lines.

Amazon has a nifty feature for most of its book listings: You can see the opening line of the given novel. I like this, as you can quite often at least get a taste of the author's style and tone. To me, this is never more evident than in the works of Larry McMurtry. He excels at the opening line, the line that sets the stage and makes you want to read more. Plus, most of his opening lines are like little Clift's Notes that sum up the whole book, at least in spirit.

Some examples:

From Lonesome Dove:

When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake.

Now come on. I defy you to read that and not want to read another and another. Even if, like me, you normally don't like the Western genre.

Leaving Cheyenne:

When I woke up Dad was standing by the bed shaking my foot.

From The Last Picture Show:

Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town.

Not that original, perhaps, but this tells you how the characters in this book will speak and think.

Cadillac Jack:

Boog warned me about Washington, but until I saw the rich lady set her pugs on the dinner table, I didn't take him seriously.

Typical McMurtry, creating an outlandish visual right off the bat. See "Lonesome Dove".

Somebody's Darling:

"All I've learned about women is that whatever it is they want it's what I don't have," I said, to see what kind of rise it would get.

Terms Of Endearment:

"The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman," Mrs. Greenway said.

Critics often praise McMurtry for his depiction of women. Of course, most of critics are male, so who knows...


Moving On:

Patsy sat by herself at the beginning of the evening, eating a melted Hershey bar.

How can you not already be in love with Patsy? I ask you.

Then you have my favorite McMurty book, and one of my top 10 favorite novels period, All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers. I'll cheat a bit with this one and give the first paragraph:

I think I fell in love with Sally while she was eating breakfast, the first morning we were together. Either I did it then or I did it a little earlier the same morning, watching her stretch. I had gone up to Austin to waste time and eat Mexican food and ended up getting invited to a party at a professor's house. He was a dapper little English sociologist with a great lust for his students-- he referred to girls as fuckists, a term I had never heard. Several times during the evening he came over to me and pointed at a girl and said, "There's a great little fuckist for you, my boy."

The first sentence is pretty good, but the entire paragraph, the first thing I'd ever read by McMurtry, totally sold me. Not to mention the title of the book itself, which I just love. The fact that some of it took place in Austin didn't hurt, either (though more takes place in San Francisco and Houston).

Compare this to the opening sentence of the book Katiemoo is currently reading, if you can believe her blog: Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero:

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.

See, I read this book about the same time I read "All My Friends" (1986 or so). Though I liked both books, one hooked me right away and told me what to expect; the other didn't. I guess I'm a sucker for first impressions.